Berry

For the botanical term, see true berry. For other uses, see Berry (disambiguation).

In everyday English, a berry is a broad term for any small edible fruit. Most berries are juicy, round or semi-oblong, brightly coloured, sweet or sour, and don't have a stone or pit. Most berries are edible, but some are poisonous to humans.

True berries are distinguishable from false berries like blueberries and cranberries for which the fruit is formed from other parts of the flower, not just the ovary. Also not true berries, aggregate fruits like raspberries are collections of small fruits, and accessory fruits like strawberries are formed from parts of the plant other than the flower. As explained below, none of these is a true berry.

Types of berries

True berries

Main article: True berry

Several types of common "berries", none of which is a berry by botanical definition:
The blueberry is a false berry, blackberries are aggregate fruit, and strawberries are accessory fruit.

In botanical language, a berry or true berry is a simple fruit having seeds and pulp produced from a single ovary. The true berry is the most common type of fleshy fruit in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp. The flowers of these plants have a superior ovary and one or more carpels within a thin covering and fleshy interiors. The seeds are embedded in the common flesh of the ovary.

The true berries are dominated by the family Ericaceae, many of which are hardy in the subarctic:

Other berries not in the Rosaceae or Ericaceae:

Not a botanical berry

Many "berries" are not actual berries by the scientific definition, but fall into one of these categories:

• False berries like blueberry and cranberry, are epigynous, made from a part of the plant other than a single ovary.
• Compound fruit, which includes:
  • Aggregate fruit are multiple fruits with seeds from different ovaries of a single flower, such as blackberry, raspberry, and boysenberry
  • Multiple fruit, being the fruits of separate flowers, packed closely together. The mulberry, for example, is essentially like a cluster of grapes, but tiny and compressed into one "berry"[1].
• Other accessory fruit, where the edible part is not generated by the ovary, such as the strawberry for which the seed-like achenes are actually the "fruit" derived from the ovary.

The bramble fruits, compound fruits of genus Rubus (blackberries), are some of the most popular pseudo-berries:

Raspberries

Modified berries

The fruit of citrus, such as the orange, kumquat and lemon, is a modified berry called a hesperidium.

The fruit of cucumbers and their relatives are modified berries called "pepoes". A plant that bears berries is referred to as bacciferous.

Colour and medical benefits

By contrasting in colour with their background, berries are more attractive to animals that eat them, aiding in the dispersal of the plant's seeds.

Berry colours are due to natural pigments synthesized by the plant. Medical research^[1] has uncovered medicinal properties of pigmented polyphenols, such as flavonoids, anthocyanins, and tannins and other phytochemicals localized mainly in berry skins and seeds. Berry pigments are usually antioxidants and thus have oxygen radical absorbance capacity ("ORAC") that is high among plant foods.^[2] Together with good nutrient content, ORAC distinguishes several berries within a new category of functional foods called "superfruits" and is identified by DataMonitor as one of the top 10 food categories for growth in 2008^[3].

Alaska wild "berries" from the Innoko National Wildlife Refuge.

Notes

See also

• List of fruits
• Epigynous berry
• Accessory fruit
• Aggregate fruit
• Multiple fruit

External links

• The National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens - Description of berries
• Encarta.msn.com - Differentiation between true berries, pepos, and hesperidia
• United States National Berry Crops Initiative
• Berry Health Benefits Network - Scientists working on the health properties of berries